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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the curing-addiction-via-crooked-prosecutions dept.

The Free Thought Project reports [thefreethoughtproject.com]

After years of injustice, thousands of people wrongfully convicted on drug charges in Massachusetts will finally have their convictions overturned [bostonglobe.com]. The ruling centers on drug lab tests that were falsified by a state-employed chemist named Annie Dookhan.

The state's highest court on [January 18] ordered prosecutors to drop a large portion of the more than 24,000 drug convictions affected by the misconduct of former state drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan, issuing an urgent call to resolve a scandal that has plagued the legal system since 2012.

Dookhan was imprisoned in 2013 after being charged with a suite of crimes relating to her years-long career of deceit, where she falsified tens of thousands of reports to jail innocent people [slate.com]. She would mark results as "positive" for illegal substances without actually testing them, even adding cocaine to samples when no cocaine was present.

At sentencing, Judge Carol S. Ball stated, "Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core."

[...]The Massachusetts high court ruled that each [of 24,391 defendants] had a right to a hearing, but the cost and logistics of doing so would be unfeasible.

[...]Prosecutors didn't walk away [however], and the state's [Supreme] Court finally put an end to most of the injustice.[1]

[...]The court said defendants whose cases aren't dismissed should receive a notice that their cases had been affected by Dookhan's misconduct. Then, any indigent defendants would receive public counsel to explore requests to vacate their pleas or get new trials.

[1] Duplicate link in article.

Related: Are Questionable Drug Tests Filling U.S. Prisons? [soylentnews.org]

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